Draw your own conclusion. I personally think there is no way Te'o isn't completely full of shit. The detail he goes into about his "girlfriend" in the hospital, how they met, etc. There is no way he was the victim of the hoax.

Draw your own conclusion. I personally think there is no way Te'o isn't completely full of shit. The detail he goes into about his "girlfriend" in the hospital, how they met, etc. There is no way he was the victim of the hoax.

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Here is the thing I really don't get, why would he do it? I mean he already lost his grandmother, why would he need more sympathy than that. I mean I can draw a line and say, yeah, I could see him trying to make himself into some kind of great man who overcame great adversity but it still makes no sense.

If you are going to put yourself out in the spotlight like that you better know that someone is eventually going to find out. And that is why I honestly think he was just duped into believing this girl was real, and did in fact die.

Is it odd that they never met face to face, yes, is it even more odd that they never skyped, absolutely. The fact that he has never seen this girl makes it one of the oddest stories I have ever heard.

I am just not convinced on the motivation on his part. Why would he do it? Better question, did he really think no one would find out?

Here is the thing I really don't get, why would he do it? I mean he already lost his grandmother, why would he need more sympathy than that. I mean I can draw a line and say, yeah, I could see him trying to make himself into some kind of great man who overcame great adversity but it still makes no sense.

If you are going to put yourself out in the spotlight like that you better know that someone is eventually going to find out. And that is why I honestly think he was just duped into believing this girl was real, and did in fact die.

Is it odd that they never met face to face, yes, is it even more odd that they never skyped, absolutely. The fact that he has never seen this girl makes it one of the oddest stories I have ever heard.

I am just not convinced on the motivation on his part. Why would he do it? Better question, did he really think no one would find out?

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Maybe I'm reading this wrong but I assume that Te'o is claiming they did meet in person.

SI: Where did you meet her in California? TE'O:She actually came to one of the games. She saw me at one of the games. SI: October 15, I assume is USC? TE'O:That was in November. But she saw me at the USC game of my sophomore year. We were still just friends, we were acquaintances.

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SI: How did you meet her? TE'O: We met just, ummmm, just she knew my cousin. And kind of saw me there so. Just kind of regular. SI: How long were you dating? I know that can be a complicated question. TE'O:Oct. 15 was the official date. Of last year. I've known her for four years. So we've been friends. SI: So you dated for about a year. TE'O:Yeah.

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So he says they met after one of his games and that they knew each other for years before they started dating. How can that be true if he was "hoaxed" into thinking she was real? It's really confusing because other people said they remember meeting her too. WTF is going on?

Te'o's agent, Tom Condon, said the athlete had no plans to make any public statements in Bradenton, Fla., where he has been training with other NFL hopefuls at the IMG Academy.

Notre Dame said Te'o found out that Kekua was not a real person through a phone call he received at an awards ceremony in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 6. He told Notre Dame coaches about the situation on Dec. 26.

The AP's media review turned up two instances during that gap when the football star mentioned Kekua in public.

Te'o was in New York for the Heisman presentation on Dec. 8 and, during an interview before the ceremony that ran on the WSBT.com, the website for a South Bend TV station, Te'o said: "I mean, I don't like cancer at all. I lost both my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. So I've really tried to go to children's hospitals and see, you know, children.''

In a column that first ran in The Los Angeles Times, on Dec. 10, Te'o recounted why he played a few days after he found out Kekua died in September, and the day she was supposedly buried.
"She made me promise, when it happened, that I would stay and play,'' he said on Dec. 9 while attending a ceremony in Newport Beach, Calif., for the Lott Impact Awards.

On Wednesday, when Deadspin.com broke the story, Swarbrick said Notre Dame did not go public with its findings sooner because it expected the Te'o family to come forward first.

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So Manti told Notre Dame (on the 26th) he found out she wasn't real on Dec 6th but still went on talking about his dead girlfriend after that. ???? Maybe I'm too cynical. Maybe he was 100% fooled by someone's VERY elaborate hoax. Maybe it's a little of both but I'm pretty convinced he wasn't telling the truth for at least some of the time.

ESPN is reporting that an anonymous teammate of Te'o said they knew she wasn't his girlfriend and that Manti was playing it for the media attention. Anything from an anonymous source needs to be taken with a grain of salt but...

While not saying that Manti Te'o participated in or knew about the hoax that his girlfriend did not exist, a former teammate told ESPN's Bob Holtzman on Wednesday that players knew the woman wasn't really his girlfriend even though Te'o played that up as his tragic story was being told.

In September, the grandmother of Te'o died, and it was widely reported that his girlfriend died hours later. Media outlets pounced on the story as Notre Dame began its march to the title game. After Deadspin.com broke the hoax story, however, multiple media reports have said players thought that Te'o had only met Lennay Kekua once and that it wasn't really accurate to call her his girlfriend. But as condolences poured in, Te'o "played along," according to the teammate, who wished to remain anonymous.

The teammate portrayed the move as part of the All-American's personality, telling ESPN that Te'o liked attention so much that he would sometimes point himself out to friends when he was on television.